HIVMA weighed in with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Division of Viral Hepatitis, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention in support of the CDC’s proposed new age-based (“birth cohort”) screening guidelines for the Hepatitis C virus (“HCV”).

HIVMA’s comments emphasized that increased screening alone will be insufficient without also devoting more attention to building the necessary infrastructure and health-care workforce to effectively manage and treat those with HCV infection. The comments noted that building such expertise among the primary care medical workforce is now especially important, since the advent of the directly acting antiviral agents for treatment of HCV.